


'Til Tomorrow

by mnemosyne



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemosyne/pseuds/mnemosyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She can smell apples and caramel and burning wood on the air and knows that it is autumn. The first breaths of October curl their scents around her and she feels renewed; no other month, she thinks, makes its presence as known in the air. She thinks of candycanes and peppermint mocha and fresh cut fir, of rain and grass and cherryblossom, but nothing enfolds her like October does."</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Til Tomorrow

She can smell apples and caramel and burning wood on the air and knows that it is autumn. The first breaths of October curl their scents around her and she feels renewed; no other month, she thinks, makes its presence as known in the air. She thinks of candycanes and peppermint mocha and fresh cut fir, of rain and grass and cherryblossom, but nothing enfolds her like October does.

It's warm out still, so she smiles when she finds her winter clothes box, stuck haphazard in the back of a closet, during a search for her second-favourite red shoes. Thoughtful, Rosalee tugs it out anyway and leaves it in the hallway to sort through later. She finds one shoe tucked behind the cardboard and the other inexplicably buried under a pile of  _Green Arrow_  comics she has no idea lived in her house. The heel is broken so she leaves both shoes on the table and wears sneakers to the theatre.

Later on, the roads glow gently in the streetlight as she walks home, breezes ruffling her hair and carrying scents of other people's dinner, sounds of other people's conversation; if she let it, she thinks, the noise of other people's lives would drown her. Sometimes it's overwhelming, but tonight it's just October and the nights are long and welcoming.

“You're out pretty late.” Rosalee turns, unhurried, towards the voice, smiles brightly, and softens it when she sees the tension in Nick's face, the furrow in his brow that rarely seems to be absent these days. There's a bruise at his temple and a metallic smell spiking the air around him. She does not ask, but steps towards him as if she can stand guard against his pain.

“I was at the theatre, thought I'd walk back,” she tells him, waving the paper she is still clutching in her hand. Deftly, Nick swipes it from the air, shaking out the creases against his jacket.

“ _Annie?_ ” he says, “That's what you decided to go see?”

Rosalee makes a face at him. “Don't be a snob, Nick.”

“I'm not being a snob, it's just... terrible.” Nick laughs, low and easy, cream over molasses, and Rosalee's stomach twists at the sound. “You realise they're doing  _Romeo and Juliet_ , down at the-”

“And a reimagined  _Volpone_ at the rep, I know,” she snatches the brochure back. “But tonight, I wanted to see singing orphans.”

“That's a pretty alarming kink, Rosalee.”

They've turned down the street now, Nick matching his paces to Rosalee's, lazy-slow steps in starlight. She ignores the jibe, and links her arm with his. He tenses at her touch, then unfurls, as if his whole body emitted the sigh that escapes his lips.

“Your turn,” she tells him, “how come you're walking the streets, picking up any stray Fuchsbau that happens across your path?”

“Can't sleep,” he says simply, and she tightens her grip on his arm “seems to come harder these days.”

Across the road is a playpark, and two children still out, pushing tiny legs in a determined effort to get the adult swings to work. Rosalee is concerned until she sees the teenager lounging bored against the fence, cigarette pressed against pursed lips. As she watches, the youth grinds the final stub against a fencepost and barks at his wards, who stumble, giggling from the swings. And idea strikes and she tugs Nick's arm. Frowning, he follows her gesture.

“No.”

“Trust me,” Rosalee assures and isn't surprised when Nick doesn't object as she propels him across the road, now so empty of the traffic that would have halted them only a few hours ago. She wants to explain to him about October and how it tastes like being alive, but isn't sure how to frame it to someone who does not, cannot, experience the  _tastetouchsmellsound_ of the city.

It takes a moment or two to navigate the latch and Nick swears softly under his breath. Rosalee grins, presses close against his back. “He can kick in a door,” she teases, “but he can't handle a children's gate?”

The latch gives. “I just don't know my own strength,” remarks Nick dryly, and holds the gate open for Rosalee to pass through.

The slide is rusted and small and when Nick makes a face at it, Rosalee rolls her eyes and tugs him towards the swings. She's too old for this, the rational part of her mind tells her, but the foxcub in her heart just wants to fly again. Settling herself on the plastic seat, she looks at Nick expectantly before he too, rather more gingerly, takes his place on the next.

“I hope,” Rosalee says seriously, “that you remember how to do this.”

Nick pushes off with both feet and a unspoken challenge.

It feels good to swing. Air rushes, cool and cleansing over her face and Rosalee closes her eyes as she moves higher, higher through the air. She remembers being a child and swinging from the rope over the river; remembers whistles and laughter, the haze of summer beating down on her back and pinching winter frosts on her toes. She feels Nick beside her, body moving in low wide arcs, eyes studying, evaluating. His desperation to understand, she thinks, smells stronger than his cologne.

She doesn't know how long it is before they stop, before the companionable silence that stretches between them becomes too thin to hold and it is only inevitable that one of them must shatter it. Gently, Rosalee's feet touch the earth again and she looks across at Nick.

“Tell me at least you're tired enough to sleep now,” she says. Nick stands, cracks what sounds like every bone in his body before he responds.

“I'm not sure swinging in a children's playpark counts as therapy, if that was what you were going for.”

Rosalee throws back her head and laughs, lets her toes tingle with affection for him. In another life, the life in which she's a Disney princess and doesn't think of everything and nothing a hundred times a minute, in that life, she could love a man like Nick. They would dance in the spring and ride in the summer, and bar their front door against the cold. But that is not her life and she has autumn and winter, gold harvest and clean frost. She watches as if from a distance as Nick reaches out, stills her idly rocking swing with one steady hand. They stay motionless for a few moments, and Rosalee can feel seasons passing between them.

“Come on,” he says at last. “I'll walk you home.”

Rosalee shakes her head, leans forward, resting on the ball of one foot, laces trailing in the dust. It is almost inevitable that Nick steps into her shadow, wraps cold fingers around the chain of the swing, hand brushing against hers as if it were accidental.

Nick tastes of apples and ash and a thousand lives they both have yet to live.


End file.
